1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to email response time trends and more particularly relates to email response time estimation based on a set of email recipients.
2. Description of the Related Art
Unlike more traditional communication methods, many electronic communication methods lack immediate feedback. When communicating verbally, one can hear and often see other participants in the conversation, and their responsiveness and availability can easily be gauged. When communicating via email, instant messaging, or online via blogs, forums, wiki's, or other collaboration tools, however, other participants can be located throughout the world, and traditional verbal and visual feedback is not available to gauge responsiveness and availability.
If an email message is urgent, it can be important to know when one can expect to receive a response. It can also be important to know how soon to follow up an email with an additional communication if a response is not received. Sending multiple messages requesting the same response, when the recipient has not yet read the original message, can be inefficient and counterproductive for the sender. Likewise, unnecessarily delaying a response to an email message, or forgetting to respond, is also inefficient.
Other factors, such as time differences, conflicting schedules, and vacations, can also affect email responsiveness. These factors may be unknown to an email's sender, who may be futilely waiting for a response from an unavailable recipient. Traditionally, some email and instant messaging clients show an available/unavailable status that indicates whether or not a user is currently at their computer. While useful, the fact that a user is at their computer, does not necessarily mean that they will respond. Additionally, a user can typically override their status. A user may, in reality, be available and responsive, while their status is unavailable, or unresponsive while their status if available.